The first day continued with a talk from Victoria Fast, a former Geothink graduate student and now an Assistant Professor at University of Calgary in the Department of Geography. In it she posed questions about accessibility and how smart cities may or may not benefit those who are most in need.

Later on the first day of the Summer Institute, Montreal City Council Chairman Harout Chitilian introduced students to the ways in which Montreal aims to blend open data, new tech and entrepreneurship to make Montreal a leader in smart cities. He spoke at the Institute even as outside McGill the city celebrated its 375th anniversary.

Discussion began with introductions by Geothink Head Renee Sieber, associate professor in McGill’s School of Environment and Department of Geography. Presentations were given by Stephane Guidoin, open data chief advisor in Montreal’s Smart and Digital City Office and Geothink Co-Applicants Stéane Roche, associate professor in University Laval’s Department of Geomatics; Pamela Robinson, associate professor in Ryerson University’s School of Urban and Regional Planning; Rob Feick, associate professor in Waterloo University’s School of Planning; Teresa Scassa, Canada research chair in University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law; an Victoria Fast, an assistant professor at University of Calgary’s Department of Geography.

In a talk that helps to summarize the previous three presenters, Renee Sieber discusses the different ways in which open data can be evaluated. She details many of the common quantitative metrics used—counting applications generated at a hackathon, the number of citizens engaged, or the economic output from a particular dataset—before discussing some qualitative indicators of the importance of a specific open data set.

Pamela Robinson dispels the notion that open data derives value from economic benefits by instead discussing how such data can be used to fundamentally shift the relationship between civil society and institutions. She elaborates on this idea by noting that not all open data sets are created equal.

Teresa Scassa starts our fifth talk by discussing how those working in the discipline of law don’t usually participate in the evaluation of open data. While those in law don’t actually evaluate open data, however, legal statutes often are responsible for mandating such valuation, she argues. In particular, legal statutes often require specific types of data to be open.

Join Peter Johnson as he kicks off day two of Geothink’s 2016 Summer Institute by inviting students to dream that they are civil servants at the City of Toronto when the city receives a hypothetical “F” rating for its open data catalogue. From this starting premise, Johnson’s lecture interrogates how outside agencies, academics, and organizations evaluate municipal open data programs.

In Geothoughts 9, we examine a Geothink project on open data standards that officially kicked off in February 2015 with a Geothink teleconference call.

Here we examine what role Canada's cities play in international solutions to climate change as well as how new technologies shape interactions in neighbourhoods with Geothink co-applicant Alex Aylett.

In Geothoughts Conversations 2, we stop by McGill University to talk about the nature of democracy in an age of open data with Geothink head Renee Sieber, associate professor in McGill University’s Department of Geography and School of Environment, and Daniel Paré, associate professor in the Department of Communication and School of Information Studies at the University of Ottawa.

In our latest podcast, Geothink co-applicant researcher Peter A. Johnson, assistant professor of Geography and Environmental Management at the University of Waterloo, discusses how the seemingly desirable ethos of open data may nonetheless hamper our understanding of how end users are interacting with government products.

This episode features a look at how spatial data can be used to improve access to healthcare for all Canadians. In it we talk with Scott Bell from the Department of Geography and Planning at University of Saskatchewan.

This month’s conversation features Geothink Head Renee Sieber, associate professor in McGill University; Robert Goodspeed, assistant professor at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning; Daren Brabham, assistant professor in the University of Southern California; and Monica Stephens, assistant professor at State University of New York at Buffalo. To start us off, Brabham gets the group rolling on what exactly defines the boundaries of crowdsourcing

This podcast examines how civic participation is changing with the advent of geospatial digital technologies that allow for cities to collect many forms of data on their citizens and for citizens to communicate with cities and about all that happens within them. We interview Geothink’s Head Renee Sieber, Associate Professor in McGill University’s Department of Geography and School of Environment, to find out her opinions on this subject.

In our third edition of Geothoughts, were excited to bring you an interview with Yvonne Chen, a strategic planner for the city of Edmonton’s Open City Initiative. You can also subscribe to this podcast by finding it on iTunes. In this interview, we talk with Chen about what it means for Edmonton to be on par with the world’s smart cities, the open city initiative due before the Edmonton City Council and future projects that will revolutionize the life of the city’s citizens.

This week we ask the opinion of an expert in the issues that arise with innovations in information and communication technologies about Canada’s Action Plan for Open Government 2.0 and the role of open data.

In our first podcast, we talk with Tracey Lauriault, a researcher with The Programmable City Project who studies open data and open government in Canada, about Canada's Action Plan for Open Government 2.0